


you matter to me

by realjane



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28278960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realjane/pseuds/realjane
Summary: Rey ran. She daydreamed about him coming after her.Then, he did. On Christmas Eve, no less.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	you matter to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Peterhollandorgana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peterhollandorgana/gifts).



> Merry Christmas to my besties, Shelly and Kaitlyn, who put up with so much from me it's silly. Here's a thing I joked about writing months ago... it's entirely unbeta'd, and you're lucky it's been spell-checked. Enjoy!

The last time she saw him, Ben was unconscious. Half-dead from a collision with another vehicle, no fight left in him. It had been enough to know he was alive, back then… for Rey to leave. Especially once his mother turned up. 

Rey hopped in the station wagon and hoofed it to Colorado for a job. Which turned out to be a dead end, which led her to Maz’s Cantina for a stiff drink, which somehow turned into a night-time bartending gig. It didn’t hurt that Maz (a tough lady with a bleeding heart for misfits) knew everyone in town, including Unc. He was nobody’s uncle, had no family to speak of, but everyone called him Unc, and he owned the only reputable auto shop for fifty miles in any direction. He was willing to give Rey a part-time job washing cars. That is, until he caught her tinkering with the engine of his Ford Falcon. That was the start of a strange partnership, where she fixed up townie cars, and he let her. 

She still couldn’t forget Ben. 

Not when he blew up her phone with concerned messages. He never called. Only texts. She knew he couldn’t say things the way he wanted them to be understood, but she never misunderstood his written words.

**Ben: You promised me I wasn’t alone, Rey. You could’ve said goodbye.**

Sometimes she dreamed that he showed up at her work. He’d drive his car into the bay and hop out, wearing some ridiculously expensive sunglasses--no. He’d have his  _ bike _ towed to the shop. Something vintage, but worthless to anybody who wasn’t him. Ben would see her, and he would sit on her rolling stool as she tinkered with his bike--of course, nothing would actually be wrong with it, he would’ve paid the tow truck driver off--and confess in his quiet way that he loved her. That he needed her, that nothing was the same without her. The daydream always trailed off at the declaration, because what the  _ heck _ does someone say to such a confession, even in a dream?

But he didn’t come. And gradually, his texts tapered off into short salutations:

**Ben: Thinking about you.**

**Ben: I hope you’re okay.**

**Ben: I miss you.**

**Ben: Good morning.**

**Ben: Good night.**

**Ben: Happy Halloween. I’m a ghost.**

**Ben: Joyous Turkey Day, you vegetarian heathen.**

**Ben: Coming home for Christmas?**

He just didn’t stop. Rey didn’t reply, not once. Ben Solo didn’t give up.

Christmas was the worst time for an orphan, but she found herself wrangled into a Misfit Dinner at Maz’s ranch for Christmas Eve--Finn and Poe were there, two of the only people in Rey’s acquaintance near her age, and quite possibly the only gay men in town (although that didn’t matter so much to the residents; Poe was the soccer coach of the prodigious varsity girls’ team at the local high school, and Finn taught history), and Rose Tico (who was trying very hard to get Rey to join the roller derby team), and a handful of other people who had nowhere to go for the holidays.

The evening was pleasant, though raucous; Maz had insisted on providing the entire meal, but there were so many different diets to account for that she wound up just ordering Rey a cheese pizza. Maz couldn’t remember whether or not Rey ate turkey. There was too much alcohol and too many opinions, and so many presents, but… Rey still felt terribly lonely.

The party was in full swing when her phone chimed.

**Ben: Merry Christmas, Rey. I hope you like your gift.**

She looked down at the device and frowned. Before she could stop her fingers--

**Rey: which gift?**

_. _

_. _

_. _

_. _

**Ben: I knew you didn’t change your number.**

_. _

_. _

**Ben: Rey?**

_. _

**Ben: Go check the porch, I’m sure it’s there.** ****

**Rey: im not home, ill look tonight**

**Ben: I know. Go check the porch.**

Rey frowned at her phone. She looked up in confusion--the entire party was absorbed in their gift exchange, yelling over one another for purchase--and the only person looking at her was Maz. Who nodded towards the front porch. Ray’s eyebrows knitted together.

“What?” she mouthed.

“Go.” Maz pointed a brittle finger.

“I’ve had three glasses of punch, I’m  _ not  _ driving home right now--”

Finn leaned over and growled softly. “For the love of God, Rey,  _ go.” _

She threw her napkin into her chair and huffed. “Fine!” Rey stormed out of the dining room and rucked her work boots on. She stabbed her arms through her coat sleeves and wrenched the door open.

And slammed it shut before her.

...So hard that the door bounced off the hinges, and swung inward again.

Between the edge of the door and the frame, she could just make out the startled face of Ben Solo. She sank into a crouch and covered her mouth. The world went blurry. Fingers curled around her elbows. She couldn’t make her legs work, but she was lifted from the waist to the front porch swing. Rey sat. The blurred figure crouched before her.

Kneeling at her feet was a figment of every wine-induced daydream. 

“Still with me?”  _ Oh. That’s what his voice sounded like. _ She had forgotten. It was deep but not grating, raspy but not tired.  _ Rich. _

She swallowed hard. “You’re here. Why…?”

“Because it’s not Christmas when you’re halfway across the country, ignoring my messages.” He rubbed her knee. 

“What if I want to be left alone?”

Ben shook his head. “I don’t accept that.”

“Why not?” she cried. “Wasn’t it enough that I left?”

“At first. But I know you. You’re not the kind of person who hops on an airplane and pretends like your heart isn’t broken--”

“It’s not.” She straightened, sniffling away the unbidden tears with a swipe to her nose. “And I drove.”

“Rey…” He rubbed her knee, and then his hand found its way to her unoccupied wrist. God, but he was so warm. “Didn’t you believe me?”

Did she?

Did she think he meant that he was leaving his horrible job, that he would move with her and start a new life? Did she think he meant it when he held her face in his hands? When he wrapped his arm over the back of the couch and became her pillow while she fell asleep watching bad 80’s teen comedies? Did he mean it when he called her ‘sweetheart’?

What exactly was he expecting her to believe?

She blinked until his face came fully into view. Snowflakes dotted his hair, which he had pushed from his forehead with one of those massive hands. His features were so gently lit from the combination of yellow Christmas bulbs, the porch lantern, and the inside glow that he looked like a painting. He was thinner, but that probably was from his recovery. His eyes were that tone of hazel which adapted to their surroundings, rendering them a little closer to gold. And he was so  _ serious. _

“I can see that you’re not happy to see me,” he said softly, “so I’ll go. I just… I couldn’t accept that that was  _ it. _ You know? I mean… shit, Rey. We were going to do this--” he gestured at the dark evening beyond the porch-- “together. Did you decide you didn’t want me? To come with you? You could’ve just said something. I know we were only just finding our footing, but  _ fuck.”  _

Ben stood, running his hands through his hair. “I didn’t think you’d run when I got hurt. If anything, I thought that was when I could count on you most,  _ if it happened--Christ! _ Did you think deliberately parked in oncoming traffic--”

“Shut up. Shut up, Ben. Shut up.” Rey leapt to her feet and clasped her hands over his mouth frantically. “You’re making me insane, I can’t think with you chattering on like that.”

He waited until her fingers slid away from his lips to attempt another word. “Why didn’t you call me?” he whispered.

“I was busy,” she peeped.

“Your fingers work, surely.”

“I didn’t know what to say.”

Ben wrapped his hand around her waist so she couldn’t step back. “So you chose to say nothing at all. Huh.”

“You’re mad--”

“You’re goddamned right, I’m mad. You are everything to me--”

“I’m nobody!” she cried, trying to liberate her hand from his, to no avail. “At least here, they don’t pretend like I matter more than I do. I fix cars, I serve drinks. I go home. It’s not much, but it’s enough for me.”

“I don’t accept that,” he repeated. Ben wrapped his other arm around her waist. “Please--give me a better reason than  _ that. _ Because if you want me to go, with the knowledge that you left, let it be for something that makes sense. You being nobody? That’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Rey’s eyes widened. “You said…” she stopped.

“What?”

“You were mumbling… I don’t even know if you remember it,” she said, blushing. Ben allowed her to wriggle out of his grasp and pitch herself down the steps of the porch to get some distance from him. Then, he sat on the top step. Watching her.

Rey toed the ground; the walk had been shoveled only to the edge of the concrete, so a line of ice jutted up from the crystalline layer of freshly-fallen snow. “It’s going to sound completely idiotic.”

“Try me.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. His face was shadowed, backlit as he was from the porch light. 

“You can’t hide from me, Rey.”

She cleared her throat. “You… said that you…” Rey sighed. “Forget it. It’s stupid. Go home, Ben. I promise I’ll be better about calling.” She turned towards her station wagon, but Ben reached her in a few short strides. He pulled her with a yank, and she lost her footing on the ice, forcing him to catch her. He did so--but not before his own sneakers slid out from under him. Somehow, Ben managed to keep hold of her and avoid smacking his head on the ice, but once they were down… he groaned. He laid back fully, half on the walkway and half off. Rey was still caged in his arms. She pushed off his chest in panic.

“Oh my god! Are you okay?” She cupped his cheeks. Rey’s heart lurched, feeling dwarfed against his side where she had found purchase on her knees. She made him turn his head from side to side, to breathe in, to give her any indication if he was in pain.

He sighed deeply. Sarcastically. With enough attitude that she realized not only was he  _ uninjured, _ he was faking the potential severity of the slip to get a rise out of her. She smacked his chest.

“What is wrong with you!” she gasped. He surged up and pinned her into the snow. The cold stuff went down the neck of her coat, but he wouldn’t let her give it two moments of consideration because once he was above her, his lips were suddenly pressed against her own. Ben may not have been the greatest talker, but he certainly had a heavenly mouth, and he used it to map out the exaltations made in the curves of her lips. She sighed. She let him say his piece through touch. Until he pressed his forehead to hers, and cupped the nape of her neck, Rey let her mind empty of all reason and protestation. 

“I believe I told you that  _ I love you, _ Rey. A man doesn’t say such things lightly. Even under anesthesia.” 

She curled forward into his chest; Ben sat back on his heels and cradled her with one arm. With the other, he occupied his hand with a task she could not see. Her phone beeped in her pocket.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“You can answer that.” Ben pressed his lips to her forehead. Rey held her phone between their bodies. The light illuminated her face.

**Ben: I told you because I didn’t know if I'd make it.**

“Oh.” She touched her mouth. 

_ Beep beep. _

**Ben: Because you deserve to know.**

**Ben: Because I’ve spent the last two years trying to tell you.**

**Ben: Because I wish I told dad when I had the chance.**

**Ben: Because you were the first person I wanted to call when I woke up in the hospital and you were already there, Rey.**

**Ben: Please say something. My fingers are cold.**

Rey huffed a laugh. She pocketed her phone, and his shifting posture told her that he did the same. She bumped against his thigh trying to sit up, but the muscle clenched, so she used it as leverage to perch on her knees. His hands still braced her, but at her hips. He waited for her to reply.

“Do you know how fierce you can be?” she whispered. Her fingers found his jaw, which flexed. “Sometimes it’s frightening, to be the fixed point. You fixate, Ben. You hone in. And… you were coming to see me that night, because I called you in a panic over  _ nothing--honestly,  _ I was watching some stupid movie that I don’t even remember--”

“Notting Hill.”

“Yes…” A sense of lightness settled in her to hear him recall it so easily, what was easily the worst night of her life. “You got in your car after two am, in your  _ pyjamas, _ and wrecked your car because I was feeling like nobody would ever love me, and then… you said you did, just before passing out from pain.”

Realization swept over his face. Ben clasped hand-over-wrist behind her hips. “You left because you felt responsible.”

“I am--I  _ was.” _

He loosened her hair from it’s carelessly coiffed bun by accident as he hauled her closer to kiss her forehead. “No. It was a fluke. I don’t blame you. I never have. You begged me to come to you--sweetheart, do you know how  _ special  _ that is?” He touched her chin. “You didn’t give me a chance to say it sober.”

“Maybe I didn’t want you to.”

“For god’s sake.”

“I’m serious--”

“You don’t get to decide!”

“What if it isn’t how you  _ really _ feel-- _ felt--” _

“I have never lied to you. Why would I lie about  _ that?” _

“Maybe you wouldn’t! Maybe your brain just… built me up to be someone I’m not.”

Ben graced his thumb over her bottom lip. “What? A loner with a bad temper, who happens to be a whiz at fixing cars, loves romantic comedies, hates mushrooms, loathes classic rock, and can’t sleep if she’s eaten pizza because she dreams about roller coasters? I think it’s fair to say that I know you, Rey. So well that when you called me out of a dead sleep six months ago, I got out of my bed (my favorite place), and got in my car, and on the way, a Fiesta t-boned me. And unless you hired that seventeen-year-old to do me in, it was not your fault.”

Rey made a sound of exasperation and threw her arms around his neck to temporarily squash her uneasy stomach. But Ben tucked his face into the crook of her neck.

"I quit my job. My ticket was one-way. If you think for one moment I'll have second thoughts, you're crazy."

"Oh, _Ben."_

_ Hadn’t he sent her a message every single day since she left, even though any sane person would’ve abandoned her long ago? _

Hadn’t he held her, made promises to her, long before she ever realized how deeply she felt for him… hadn’t he given her as much can be given a person without the bond of a relationship?

“You don’t have to love me, but for god’s sake… don’t shut me out.” His lips formed the words against the column of her neck. 

Rey took her phone out of her pocket again and took a moment, typing slowly over his head. His phone made no sound but a low vibration. He took it out again. He looked at her words. He reread them over and over. Then…

He kissed her softly. Ben stood, keeping Rey braced against him so she wouldn’t take a tumble again. He inclined his head towards the warmth of Maz’s house. Rey nodded. Her arm snaked around his waist as they took the walk in matched cadence. Ben knocked when they reached the front door, despite the fact that Rey insisted they just waltz in unannounced. He clasped her shoulder and rubbed it when she shivered. A few moments later, the door swung open. Maz smiled.

“Nice to see you in person, Mister Solo,” the old woman chuckled. “I hope you brought your appetite all the way from New York.”

“I’ve already eaten.”

Rey frowned…  _ how…? _

“Fine, fine. Then come in anyway, it’s stupidly cold tonight, and only doomed to get worse.” Maz stepped to the side so her new guest and her young charge could enter. The woman looked upward. The man was quite a bit taller than her. 

Ben Solo was the kind of tall person who clearly felt at ease by it, at this juncture in his life. When they first met, she had laughed to see him hunch entering doorways, but here… he looked so comfortable. He could still palm a basketball, and lift her like she was nothing, but his tallness wasn’t so strange in this house. Maybe that was because Maz liked strangeness. Nobody was lost, there.

“Honey, bring Benjamin into the living room. We’re about to do our toast.” Maz nudged Rey.

Rey did as she was told and led the man at her elbow into the living room. Finn and Poe greeted him with politeness, though Poe gave her thumbs up when Ben’s back was turned. She blushed, and Ben seemed not to notice. He sat beside a vacant armchair. Rey took the chair. Ben curled his fingers around her ankle and rubbed affectionate circles into her skin.

“So… you’ve spoken to Maz before,” she whispered.

“All I could figure out is that you worked in a dive bar near Buena Vista,” he said. “I made a lot of phone calls before I reached Maz’s Cantina.”

“You’re persistent.”

“I’m in love.” 

She wrinkled her nose at him, but all he could do was beam at her in reply.

"How long are you here for, Ben?" Finn asked, waggling his eyebrows. Ben glanced at Rey.

"Well?"

"A while," Rey said softly, and she couldn't help the smile that curled up the corners of her mouth. "As long as he wants to."

Maz distributed little glasses of her homemade spirits (which would be most closely related to moonshine in the way they stripped the lining from one’s stomach), and held up her glass.

“I toast to the friends I call my family,” Maz said.

“I toast to my love and our life we’re building,” Finn followed.

Poe laughed in a sweetly moved way. “I toast to stiff drinks and discreet bartenders.” He indicated both Rey and Maz in their turn. 

“I toast to our new league--which will actually get off the ground, thanks to our generous benefactor!” Rose stamped her feet in excitement and everyone else joined in. Maz took a bow.

“I enjoy seeing young people taking an interest in things,” Maz laughed. “Even if it is a blood sport.”

The toasts traversed the room and Rey’s free hand found its way to Ben’s nape. He fit in. He couldn’t have vibed better, the way his rich laugh rumbled with each silly addition to the Christmas Eve toast. When the circle found its way to him, Ben held up his glass.

“I toast to being reunited,” he said softly. Rey tugged on his hair sharply enough that he looked up at her.

“I toast to love. And being loved. And mattering to someone. And--”

“Jesus, Rey, how thankful can a girl be?” Finn teased and she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Here, here,” Maz said, winking at Rey. “To our  _ family. _ I love you all. You’re a gift to me.”

Everyone drank deeply, except for Ben, who observed Rey. She was calm, affable--joyful. She felt his gaze on her and blushed. A lock of his hair found itself curled in her fingers. He smiled and looked down at his phone. Her text thread was open on his screen, because he had been glancing down at it here and there. It wasn’t a promise, per se, but it was everything he wanted for Christmas, and certainly much more than he had hoped to earn from her in the way of admissions when he booked his ticket to Denver, one-way.

**Rey: i cant promise not to be scared but**

**Rey: i love you**

**Rey: that hasnt changed**

There was so much more to say, but... 

He could hang his hat on that.


End file.
